


When Children Play

by WrtrGrl



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Auror Draco Malfoy, Children, Flirting, Fluff and Humor, M/M, Podfic Welcome, Protective Parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:20:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27694732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WrtrGrl/pseuds/WrtrGrl
Summary: In which Scorpius gets up to some mischief and Draco demands Harry's help.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 2
Kudos: 98
Collections: Harry/Draco Owlpost 2020





	When Children Play

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FreddieFoxBaxter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreddieFoxBaxter/gifts).



**When Children Play**

‘Potter!’

Harry sighs. Quick footsteps approach, but he doesn’t look up from the piece of armoured fabric he’s working on.

‘I’m a little busy, Malfoy,’ he says, squinting as he lays yet another spell over the maroon fabric—honestly, couldn’t they get a better colour for this stuff?

‘Whatever you’re doing, drop it now and come with me,’ says Draco, coming to an abrupt stop at Harry’s elbow.

Harry sighs. ‘I’ve been working on this for four hours, Malfoy. Can’t this wait?’

‘No,’ says Draco. ‘I need you. Now.’

‘Draco—’

‘Damnit Potter I said come with me!’

It’s only the underlying panic lacing Draco’s voice that has Harry looking up, his hands stilling over the intricate pattern-spellwork he’s just spent the last forty minutes setting up.

Instead of the usual pristine uniform that Draco normally wears, he’s in a loose fitted, untucked t-shirt and a pair of wrinkled slacks. His hair, which is normally perfectly coiffed, falls around his face in messy strands. Despite all this, it’s the look of complete and utter panic flashing across his face that has Harry abandoning the armour completely and standing up.

’Where?’

Draco doesn’t answer. He simply turns and stalks back down the corridor. Harry follows and, despite years of Auror training, feels a brief flash of anxiety surge up his spine.

Draco pushes into a room and, half expecting the worst, Harry follows. Only to stop on the threshold and stare in bewilderment. Inside, sitting propped against a table, is a large oil painting set inside an elaborate bronze frame.

‘Er,’ says Harry, tilting his head. ‘It’s a painting?’

Draco turns back at him, grey eyes wide in disbelieve and panic. ‘It’s Scorpius.’

Harry raises his eyebrows. He steps into the room, pushing his glasses up his nose to better inspect the painting. Sure enough, within the scene of two frolicking horses, is a small blonde boy sitting in the grass near the frame.

‘Uh, right, and it’s a very nice painting of him.’

‘No you blithering idiot, it’s _actually_ Scorpius.’

Harry frowns. He looks at Draco. He looks back at the painting. Squints. The little boy in the painting crawls forward, squinting right back at him.

‘Oh,’ says Harry.

He tries to school his expression into something neutral and calm, and yet, he feels his lips twitch. Clearly, five months without practicing his interrogation skills has left his poker face a little rusty.

Draco glares at him. ‘Don’t just stand there smirking, _do_ something!’

‘What do you want me to do?’ asks Harry, carefully lifting the painting to study it closer.

‘Anything! You’re the Anti-Magics expert, fix him! Before he gets trampled to death!’

Harry looks at Scorpius again and squashes down on the instinct to laugh. One of the horses has approached him and is nuzzling at the boy’s mop of vibrant blonde hair.

‘Why didn’t you take him to St Mungos?’

‘Are you kidding? If I take him to St Mungos there’ll be a record.’

‘So?’

‘So! Then Astoria will find out that I’m completely _useless_ and I’ll never get to see my son again! Now stop blathering and fucking _get him out_!’

This time Harry does grin. He shakes his head and runs a hand through his hair.

‘How did he even get in there?’

Draco groans. ‘I don’t know! I turned away for _one second_ and the next thing I know he’s gone! Merlin, this is a nightmare. I’m supposed to be on vacation. This is supposed to be _fun_. But instead it’s picking up the same damn toy off the floor over and over again, and baby proofing the _ceiling_ because apparently toddlers flying around the room like a schizophrenic bird is a thing.’

Harry chuckles and works at disentangling Scorpius’ person from the panting. He remembers an incident involving James, a chandeler and a broken ankle (Harry’s, not James’). ‘Yes it is.’

‘And he doesn’t cry. _Ever_. Last night he apparated himself inside the fridge and I only found him because he was laughing so bloody much. He was _freezing_ and he thought it was the most hilarious thing in the world. I stayed up all night just to make sure he was okay. And this morning he was so lethargic. Not his usual self at all and now…now _this_. Merlin, what if I _did_ give him brain damage? I mean look at him! Normally he’d be grabbing at your face and trying to eat your wand and nothing. _Nothing_. He’s broken. I broke him.’

Harry pauses, and looks up at Draco, raising an eyebrow. ‘Okay, first of all, calm down. Second of all, if you’re that worried, take your damn kid to the hospital. I’m not a Doctor, Malfoy.’

‘You’re a bloody qualified medi-wizard.’

‘I’m a curse-injury specialist, there’s a difference. Generally speaking curse-injuries happen to _adults_. I know squat about healing kids. Though, from what I can see he looks perfectly fine.’

‘Then why is he so quiet?’

‘Maybe,’ says Harry dryly, and with a bit of complicated spellwork, reaches in to pull Scorpius from the painting, ‘because you kept him up all night?’

Harry deposits the happily gurgling child into Draco’s arms and casts a quick diagnostic spell, just to be sure. Draco, relief making his entire body seem to sag, clutches Scorpius to him and almost immediately begins to bounce. It’s a soft motion. One that—if his own experience is anything to go by—Harry suspects is purely subconscious. He hides a grin and focuses on his spells.

‘There!’ says Draco, jutting his chin at the results. ‘What’s that? That round red bit. Is that bad? That’s bad isn’t it?’

Harry glances up at Draco, one eyebrow raised. ‘You mean…his kidney?’

Draco huffs, grey eyes dropping away to the side as a (rather adorable) soft pink flush works it’s way up his neck. ‘Well excuse me for being concerned for my child.’

‘Just, not concerned enough to take him to a hospital,’ Harry points out, unable to resist the opportunity to make a dig.

Draco levels him with a dark look. ‘Fuck you, Potter.’

Scorpius, in the perfect timing of all toddlers, looks up at his father with an adorable lopsided grin and gurgles, ‘fuck!’

Horror flashes across Draco’s face as his gaze snaps to his son and Harry, unable to help himself, bursts out laughing.

Draco, his whole face covered in the cute pink blush, stomps out of the room, brushing past Harry and leaving him with nothing but his guffawing laughter and the tantalising smell of coconut and lemons.

* * *

‘Potter!’

Harry winces. The quill he is in the process of pulling out of a junior Auror’s cheek twitches and the boy sucks in a sharp breath.

Harry scrunches up his nose. ‘Er, sorry,’ he says and offers the boy an apologetic—if sheepish—smile.

‘Potter!’

Heavy and impatient footsteps come to a stop next to Harry’s desk. ‘Yes, Malfoy,’ Harry sighs.

‘I need you.’

Harry goes still. Oh, if only Draco knew.

The smell is back. Citrus and coconut, and Harry’s gaze shifts automatically to the crumbs within the empty bakery box on his desk, his mouth suddenly watering. Harry shakes his head, squashing unhealthy obsessions with the scent of his co-worker (lest his thoughts begin to leak over onto his face), he refocuses his attention on Draco.

‘Again?’ Harry asks, and tries (and fails) to keep the smirk out of his voice.

The pink blush returns and Harry’s smirk widens, thinking that he’d rather enjoy making Draco blush like that more.

‘Yes,’ Draco hisses. ‘Again. Now are you coming or not?’

Harry sighs again (more for theatres than actual annoyance), and turns back to the Junior. ‘Sorry about this,’ he says and with a wave of his hand pulls all the remaining quills simultaneously from the Junior’s person.

The boy (or young man—whatever) yelps and almost falls out of his chair.

Draco mutters something about show-offs and wandless magic. Harry shoots him a grin. He thrusts a potion at the kid and pushes away from the desk.

‘Drink that for the pain. Half now, half tonight. You’ll be fine,’ he says, and turns to Draco. ‘Alright, lead the way.’

This time when Harry steps into the room there is no painting. Scorpius is sitting in a magic crib, happily playing with a set of levitating blocks.

Harry looks at Draco, raising an eyebrow. ‘He looks fine.’

‘He fell off the couch,’ says Draco, watching Scorpius with avid eyes. ‘He just rolled right through my wards and straight onto the floor. I picked him up straight away, and he looks fine, but he hasn’t cried. Not even a bit.’

Tension rolls through Draco in waves and he paces back and forth along side the magic crib. He runs a hand through his already dishevelled hair and Harry’s gaze fixates on the motion. Suddenly all Harry can think about is running _his_ hands through Draco’s hair (and yes, Harry is aware that fantasising about dishevelling a man while he’s fretting about his son is an all new low but, hey, it’s been a while).

Harry sighs and runs a hand through his hair. ‘You want to know why your kid isn’t crying? Because he likes you. You’re a good Dad. He’s _happy_. You want to see him cry?’ Harry flicks off a mild stinging hex with a casual wave of his hand. Scorpius, naturally, starts to wail. ‘There. Now he’s crying’

Draco shushes Scorpius, bouncing him up and down and shooting Harry a glare. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be some sort of golden hero?’

‘That was ten years ago,’ says Harry dryly, only feeling _mildly_ guilty (though, a quick thought to his own three and the chaos they tend to spread everywhere they go has that feeling vanishing fairly quickly—the kid is young, he’ll get over it). ‘Now I’m a middle aged, divorcee father of three, on my fourteenth hour of my sixth shift this week. So, either buy me a drink, or go home.’

Draco looks down at Scorpius, handing him a block to chew on. ‘Scorpius is back with Astoria tomorrow,’ he says, still looking steadfastly down at his son. ‘I know a place off Carkitt Market that does quite a good vintage whiskey.’

Harry blinks. ‘Are…are you offering to buy me a drink?’

Grey eyes flicker back up to Harry’s face and despite the return of the pretty pink blush, Draco’s expression is as stubborn as ever. ‘I might be.’

A slow grin works it’s way onto Harry’s face. ‘See you at seven,’ he says, and he turns and saunters out of the room, feeling entirely _too_ pleased with himself.

**Author's Note:**

> One of the prompt options for this was based on an episode of Grey's Anatomy (which I happen to enjoy immensely). I had planned for it to be much bigger, and for there to be additional scenes, but unfortunately time got away from me. Hopefully, this will still satisfy the prompt.


End file.
